Digital marketing and electronic advertising helps drive today's economy. One reason that advertisers find more value in digital advertising over traditional forms of advertising, such as print and television advertising, is that digital advertising allows advertisers to better target potential consumers because of information about the user that is readily available on the user device. For instance, if the advertiser knows a particular user likes an obscure sport such as disc golf, the advertiser can provide disc-golf-related advertisements to the user. Similarly, if an advertiser knows that a user is walking past a particular diner, the advertiser can present an advertisement for the diner to the user as he or she walks by.
Typically the user would not be presented with such advertisements unless the advertiser was aware of the user's preferences, location, or other private information. The tradeoff, however, is the user's privacy. While consumers prefer better-targeted advertising, consumers do not like knowing that their personal information may be readily available to an unintended person such as an advertiser. In fact, such perceived invasions of privacy by a particular application may steer users away from the particular application.